Also worth adding here is the following comment from Notas, which directly follows the one above:
"What is monstrous about Christianity is not what it demands from man, nor what it denies to human nature, nor even the submission to which it reduces the intelligence, but the marvelous extravagance of its promises. "Christianity is the most boundless optimism known by man."
“Quel fanatisme!” exclama le pharmacien, en se penchant vers le notaire. (Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, Part 2, Chapter 8)
¡Oh! Pues si no me entienden--respondió Sancho—no es maravilla que mis sentencias sean tenidas por disparates. (Cervantes, Don Quixote, Part 2, Chapter 19)
ὀλιγόστιχα μέν, δυνάμεως δὲ μεστὰ. (Diogenes Laërtius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, Book VII, Life of Herillus)
A hand, a foot, a leg, a head, Stood for the whole to be imaginèd. (Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece, ll. 1427-8)
Aux meilleurs esprits Que d'erreurs promises! Ni vu ni connu, Le temps d'un sein nu Entre deux chemises! (Paul Valéry, Le Sylphe)
Daß es sich hier um die lange Logik einer ganz bestimmten philosophischen Sensibilität handelt und nicht um ein Durcheinander von hundert beliebigen Paradoxien und Heterodoxien, ich glaube, davon ist auch meinen wohlwollendsten Lesern nichts aufgegangen. (Nietzsche, Letter to Georg Brandes, 8 January 1888)
Et miraris quod paucis placeo cui cum paucis convenit, cui omnia fere aliter videntur ac vulgo, a quo semper quod longissime abest id penitus rectum iter censeo. (Petrarch, Epistolae de Rebus Familiaribus, Book XIX, Letter 7)
For a translation and explanation of these epigraphs, click here.
Cf. Notas, p. 449:
ReplyDelete"Christianity did not invent the idea of sin, but that of forgiveness."
Also worth adding here is the following comment from Notas, which directly follows the one above:
ReplyDelete"What is monstrous about Christianity is not what it demands from man, nor what it denies to human nature, nor even the submission to which it reduces the intelligence, but the marvelous extravagance of its promises.
"Christianity is the most boundless optimism known by man."
The original Spanish is:
ReplyDeleteEl cristianismo no inventó la noción de pecado, sino la del perdón.